Family Life
By all accounts, Humes’s childhood was full of love and support. In interviews, she said any time there was a thunderstorm, she and her mother would curl up in bed together to wait it out. She rarely got in trouble with her parents, even when she put off washing the dishes to play the piano.
Music was a big part of life in the Humes household—Humes first discovered her love of music when her parents sang duets and played piano in the living room. As she watched her parents sing and dance, she began to explore her artistic range. She practiced singing at church with her mother and learned how to play the piano and organ in Miss Bessie Allen’s Sunday School on Ninth and Magazine Streets. From a young age, her powerful voice set her apart from the other kids in the choir, and as a child she even sang at the Old Cotton Club at Logan and Broadway.
“My childhood was just about perfect. My parents were so good to me.”
– Helen Humes, as reported by Dick Kaukas in The Courier-Journal, June 30, 1973